Many types of personal apparel and accessories, including various types of protective wear and items associated with sporting activities, often involve a strap and buckle system to allow adjustable fitting of the item to a person. Some common examples of such a strap and buckle system are given by an ordinary waist belt (e.g., for men's pants) and many types of watch bands.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of such a strap and buckle system used in a conventional ice hockey goalie pad 10. As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional goalie pad 10 typically is equipped with a number of strap/buckle pairs; in the particular example of FIG. 1, the strap/buckle pairs 20, 22, 24, 26 and 28 are arranged to secure the pad to the leg of the goalie, whereas the strap/buckle pair 30 is arranged to secure the pad to the toe section of an ice skate worn by the goalie. As should be readily appreciated, each of the strap/buckle pairs is adjustable (via a number of holes in the strap with which the buckle may be secured) based on the size of the goalie's leg and the goalie's comfort needs.
Although such an arrangement typically is effective for adequately securing the goalie pad to the goalie's leg, one disadvantage of the conventional arrangement shown in FIG. 1 is that the goalie pad may not be easily and quickly put on or removed. Specifically, each time the goalie desires to put on or remove the pad, the goalie must adjust and buckle or undo each of the strap/buckle pairs. Moreover, the particular adjustments made by the goalie during one wearing of the goalie pad are lost when the goalie needs to remove the pad; hence, the buckle/strap pairs need to be readjusted with each wearing of the pad.